Muslim Heretics Conference

WASHINGTON, July 15, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — State Department-Negotiated Deadline for Reform Nears

Today the Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute released a 90-page report ( http://www.hudson.org/files/pdf_upload/textbooks_final_for_pdf.pdf), 2008 Update: Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance, with a foreword by R. James Woolsey. It was prepared in consultation with the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs.

This report compares the 2007-2008 textbooks that are currently posted on the website of the Saudi Ministry of Education with those analyzed in our 2006 study, and shows that the same violent and intolerant teachings against other religious believers noted in 2006 remain in the current texts.

They assert that unbelievers, such as Christians, Jews, and Muslims who do not share Wahhabi beliefs and practices, are hated “enemies.” Global jihad as an “effort to wage war against the unbelievers” is also promoted in the Ministry’s textbooks: “In its general usage, ‘jihad’ is divided into the following categories: …Wrestling with the infidels by calling them to the faith and battling against them.” No argument is made here that such references to jihad mean only spiritual and defensive struggles.

Lessons remain that Jews and Christians are apes and swine, Jews conspire to “gain sole control over the world,” the Christian Crusades never ended, the American universities of Cairo and Beirut are part of the continuing Crusades, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are historical fact, and on Judgment Day “the rocks or the trees” will call out to Muslims to kill the Jews.

They teach that it is permissible for a Muslim to kill an “apostate,” an “adulterer,” and those practicing “major polytheism.” Shiites are among those identified as “polytheists.” One lesson states that “it is not permissible to violate the blood, property, or honor of the unbeliever who makes a compact with the Muslims,” but is pointedly silent on whether security guarantees are extended to non-Muslims without such a compact. Other lessons demonize members of the Baha’i and Ahmadiyya groups.

A lesson from a tenth grade text now posted on the Saudi Ministry’s website sanctions the killing of homosexuals and discusses methods for doing so.

In the lessons examined in this report, the Saudi government discounts or ignores passages in the Qur’an to support tolerance.

All of these textbooks have been reissued at least once and all but two of them reissued twice, yet overall the changes to the passages in question have been minimal, and the degree of substantive change has been negligible. Taken together, the report concludes, revisions in the currently-posted texts amount to moving around the furniture, not cleaning the house.

This analysis is issued as a deadline nears for the removal of intolerant teachings from all Saudi textbooks. This commitment stems from the Saudi government’s “confirmation” of policies that resulted from extensive bilateral negotiations with the U.S., and which policies were publicly announced and lauded as “significant developments” by the State Department in July 2006. Whether Saudi Arabia’s “comprehensive revision of textbooks” will be achieved by the start of the September 2008 school year remains to be seen. As the report documents, thorough textbook reform has not yet occurred.

Saudi King Abdullah is taking a leading role in interfaith dialogue initiatives, including convening a conference in Madrid later this week. The report notes that the Saudi Education Ministry’s continued teaching of hatred and violence against other religious believers raises concerns about whether the Saudi government has a genuine desire to find common ground with other religions.

For the report ( http://www.hudson.org/files/pdf_upload/textbooks_final_for_pdf.pdf), along with English and original Arabic excerpts ( http://www.hudson.org/files/pdf_upload/Excerpts_from_Saudi_Textbooks_715.pdf) go to: www.hudson.org/religion.

Hudson Institute is a non-partisan policy research organization dedicated to innovative research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity, and freedom.

SOURCE Hudson Institute

 http://www.hudson.org

New Report Shows Saudi Ministry Textbooks Still Teach Extreme Intolerance - MarketWatch

Curbing Criticism With Defamation

By Supna Zaidi
The OIC wants a UN resolution to prevent defamation of Islam. Yet, one of its member nations proves yet again that it is simply a pretext to curb criticism of Islamic societies internationally.

The resolution, called “Combating Defamation of Religion,” is sponsored by the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). According to the text of an OIC proposal, the new UN body should state clearly that the “defamation of religions and prophets is inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression” and that states, organizations and the media have a “responsibility in promoting tolerance and respect for religious and cultural values.

Malaysia arrested internet blogger, Raja Petra Kamarudin, for insulting Islam, though what he really did was criticize the Malay government. Petra published an article in Malaysia Today website accusing Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Razak, of involvement in the 2007 murder of a Mongolian woman. Mr Razak denies the charge.

The current Malaysian administration under Abdullah Badawi is being challenged not only by critics like Petra, but also Anwar Ibrahim, who is leading the politician. Ibrahim gained national attention after he was thrown in jail under alleged trumped of charges of sodomy and corruption almost a decade ago. He is back in the game, leading the opposition against the Badawi government.

Petra’s was sentenced to two years detention under the Internal Security Act, which many critics argue is meant for terrorists, not legitimate critics of government and society. The Islamic Development Department (Jakim) director-general Datuk Wan Mohamad Sheikh Abdul Aziz has argued that the comments and criticisms throughout Petra’s writings are reminiscent of “anti-Islamic” statements westerners usually make.

Thus, Petra must be an agent for the west in Malaysia, insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and Muslims with impunity. Malaysia is not the only Muslim country that hides behind religion to attack individuals that they have a very secular “beef” with. Consider:

1. Pakistan repeatedly attacks non-Muslims, especially Christians with blasphemy. In reality many cases involve work, family, or neighborly feuds that have nothing to do with religion. See, here, here, and here.

So, what does the resolution to prevent Defamation against religion really mean to OIC members when blasphemy is used as a tool against political enemies who are Muslim themselves, like Petra? Moreover, what does such behavior suggest if blasphemy were a weapon Muslim nations could yield against non-Muslim nations? Already, we have seen the following encroachments on secular life in the west:

1. Sharia Finance;

2. Islam in public schools;

3. Violations of basic hygiene policy by Muslim medical staff;

4. Censorship of literature.

To debate any of the above, Islamists label dissenters bigots and racist, rather than address the concerns and respond on topic.

Unfortunately, instead of western nations taking a stand against the manipulation behind the OIC resolution, some countries are caving in. Norway, for example, passed anti-blasphemy laws in 2006 after the Dutch cartoon incident.

The Norwegian Penal Code states:

“Law 150-A, which has been approved by parliament, criminalizes blasphemy and clearly prohibits despising others or lampooning religions in any form of expression, including the use of photographs,” Norway’s Deputy Archbishop Oliva Howika told reporters after a meeting in Doha with Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars.

The United States, along with many European nations, are trying to defeat the resolution. Critics of the resolution correctly realize that it is meant to curb criticism of Islam though it permeates the economic, political and social life of 57 nations, and Islamist immigrants in the West.

Islamist immigrants are the real threat, and the OIC knows it. Instead of respecting and appreciating the various democratic institutions and values like tolerance and pluralism that many of their home countries lack, Islamists want Sharia.

Curbing criticism of such attempts is what the resolution against defamation of Religion attempts to do. Any challenges to unreasonable requests for religious accommodation by Islamists would now be considered discrimination, ignoring the significant difference between equal treatment under the law with special treatment of one faith over all others.

The resolution must fail. It is hypocritical considering how the 57 Muslim nations treat non-Muslims and even Muslim minorities in their own states. Moreover, it is a weapon to silence the spread of Islamism in the West by tying the hands of critics. Malaysia’s Raja Petra Kamarudin is but one example of many victims of blasphemy laws in the Islamic world already. The resolution against the defamation of religion would make detentions’ like his the norm and not news worthy if passed.

(Supna Zaidi is editor-in-chief of Muslim World Today and asst director of Islamist Watch at the Middle East Forum)

Muslim World Today: Front Page 9262008

China’s Muslims say Ramadan a time of repression

By WILLIAM FOREMAN

Associated Press Writer

William Foreman

Uighurs are seen at the Sufi mosque in Yarkent, in China’s western Xinjiang province Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008. For followers of Islam, Ramadan is supposed to be a time of fasting, spiritual reflection and prayer. But for many members of China’s Muslim ethnic Uighur minority, the holy month is also full of fear and seething resentment about increasingly tight restrictions - coming on the heels of a series of attacks - on how they worship and practice their moderate form of Islam.

All that was left on the chin of the Muslim man praying at the huge brownstone mosque was a small patch of stubble. He said officials had forced young men in China’s far western Xinjiang region to cut off their beards at the start of the holy month of Ramadan.

“If I didn’t shave, they would do this to me,” said the man, who put his wrists together as if handcuffed, his eyes bulging with anger. “If I say more, I could be arrested.”

He gave only part of his name, Arem, and stomped away.

For Muslims, Ramadan is a time of fasting and prayer. But for China’s Muslim ethnic Uighurs, the holy month is also full of fear and seething resentment about increasingly tight restrictions on how they practice their moderate form of Islam, influenced by the Sunni and Sufi sects.

Managing the restive Turkic people is developing into one of China’s biggest challenges. Like the Tibetans, the Uighurs have been unwilling to buy into the government’s plan: greater economic prosperity instead of greater religious freedom or autonomy.

This year has been especially jittery in Xinjiang, a sprawling territory three times the size of France that is home to 9 million Uighurs (pronounced WEE-GURS). Despite ramped-up security in the region before the Beijing Olympics, a string of bombings and deadly attacks - the worst wave of violence in a decade - deeply embarrassed China under the global spotlight.

China blamed terrorists, but has yet to release evidence that links terror groups to attacks that killed 33 people in Kuqa and Kashgar in western Xinjiang.

With the Olympics over and the world’s focus elsewhere, it seems to be payback time for Xinjiang. Overseas Uighur rights groups have accused the government of mass arrests, which police deny. Uighurs interviewed by The Associated Press in Kuqa and Kashgar complained of sweeping detentions but would not say more. In Kuqa, security officials followed an AP journalist for most of his visit.

The most obvious signs of tension are the tight restrictions on Ramadan, which ends this week.

Several local governments have posted lists of warnings on their Web sites, including a detailed one by the township of Yingmaili in Xayar county, near Kuqa. Government employees, teachers and students can’t fast during Ramadan. Mosques can’t host out-of-town visitors or play video and sound recordings. Proselytizing in public is prohibited. Surveillance of mosques must be increased. Restaurants must stay open during the daylight fasting period.

“All effective means must be used to make sure that men shave their beards and that women remove veils that cover their faces,” adds the notice.

A slogan painted on a wall in the area warns Muslims it is illegal to make the annual pilgrimage to Mecca except with a government-sanctioned tour group.

Such restrictions have long been on the books but were selectively enforced, said Dru Gladney, an expert on Uighurs at the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California.

“The government has really been enforcing these restrictions in Xinjiang more than in the past,” Gladney said. “In other Muslim areas in China, you certainly don’t see these similar kinds of restrictions.”

In many ways, Xinjiang is China’s Siberia. This harsh land of snowcapped mountains and scorching deserts is broken up by oil fields and oasis cities surrounded by lush fields of cotton, melons and grapes. The territory has been China’s nuclear test ground and home to an extensive “laogai,” a gulag-like prison system.

Xinjiang also shares borders with Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian nations - a volatile neighborhood that makes Beijing nervous.

www.kansascity.com | 09/28/2008 | China’s Muslims say Ramadan a time of repression

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Two of the Arab world’s most prominent Muslim theologians from the Sunni and Shiite sects unleashed verbal salvos against each other in an increasingly sharp war of words between the religion’s two main branches.
The exchange began when Youssef al-Qaradawi, one of the most well-known Islamic television clerics, called Shiites

«heretics» and accused them seeking to infiltrate Sunni societies in a recent interview.
Lebanon’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah _ one of the most influential Arab Shiites _ shot back that Qaradawi was trying to incite «fitna» or civil strife in the Muslim community.
The long tense relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the region have flared into open dispute in recent years, following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the eruption of sectarian killings there.
Though sectarian violence has eased in Iraq this year, it has flared in other places, particularly Lebanon, which saw heavy clashes in May between Sunni gunmen and the Shiite Hezbollah, leaving dozens dead.
Periodic reconciliation efforts, such as a Sunni-Shiite dialogue conference in June in the holy city of Mecca, have done little to ease deep suspicions among the Mideast’s Sunni majority toward Shiites, seen by some as a tool for spreading the influence of Persian Iran.
The latest verbal clash started with a Sept. 9 interview that al-Qaradawi gave to Egypt’s independent daily Al-Masri Al-Youm.
«Shiites are Muslims but they are heretics and their danger comes from their attempt to invade the Sunni society,» said the Egyptian-born cleric, who lives in Qatar. «They are able to do that because of their billions (of dollars) and trained cadres of Shiites proselytizing in Sunni countries.
«In this period, we should protect the Sunni society from the Shiite invasion,» he said.
Al-Qaradawi, a Sunni Muslim, is widely respected throughout the Middle East and has a popular weekly television show on Islamic law on the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera. He has also participated in numerous Muslim and interfaith reconciliation dialogues.
Mideast countries are overwhelmingly Sunni, except for Iraq, Iran and Bahrain. Lebanon has a Shiite plurality.
Ibrahim Bayram, a political analyst with Lebanon’s leading An-Nahar newspaper, said Wednesday that al-Qaradawi’s statements were «strange because he is considered a moderate cleric and he used to call for closer relations between Sunnis and Shiites.
«The time when any cleric can decide who is a Muslim and who is not, is gone,» he added.
Days after al-Qaradawi’s interview, Fadlallah responded in Kuwait’s Al-Rai Al-Amm newspaper. «If what has been attributed to Sheik al-Qaradawi is true, then this amounts to fitna,» he said, using the word for internal civil strife that is anathema to Muslim communities.
Al-Qaradawi replied with a statement to al-Rai al-Amm saying, «we Sunnis know that we are the only group that will survive. All other (Muslim) groups have been involved in heresy.
Many Sunnis in the Arab world have shown admiration for Shiite Hezbollah for standing up against Israel. But much of Hezbollah’s popularity among Sunnis in the region was lost after the Shiite group turned its guns against Lebanon’s Sunnis in a political dispute in May.
Sunnis throughout the region have also been suspicious of the close ties between Iran and Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government, accusing the Persian nation of seeking to dominate the Arab world.
The 14-century-old dispute stems from the succession of Prophet Muhammad, splitting the Muslim world into Sunni and Shiite branches. Both branches follow the same basic tenets, but important differences include commemorations of rival historical figures.

Top Sunni and Shiite clerics trade accusations

Interview with the Muslim Reform Thinker Amina Wadud:  “The Koran Cannot Be Usurped”

by Martina Sabra

Islam, gender equality and human rights are compatible – this is a basic conviction of Amina Wadud, author of several books about Islam and women. Martina Sabra interviewed the Islamic feminist at a recent conference about “Women power in Islam” in Germany

Professor Wadud, in 2005 you produced a world-wide media hype because you publicly lead a gender-inclusive prayer for Muslim men and women in New York. You received hate-mails from all over the world, there were even bomb threats. Looking back, what do you think about the events today, and what are your conclusions from what happened?

Amina Wadud: First of all, I wasn’t the first Muslim woman to lead a mixed prayer. But the Sharia has determined by majority opinion that men should be the leaders of all rituals in public. I have been working in concert with more progressive Muslims, who lead mixed prayers. This is something that has been going on among the Sunnis for some 20 years – so it is maybe not very well known, but it is practiced by others. The New York prayer was intentionally done to bring in the experience of women as prayer leaders. The rationale is that some of the rules which we have practiced are not rules which are part of the Koran or the Sunna but they have become a part of culture and history. And those things can be changed from a religious point of view.

There was a great deal of media sensation. But the prayer is a kind of worship, an intimate relationship with God, and it is difficult to do it just for the sensation. It is very difficult to organize mixed prayers, because you need Muslims who want to pray together, and you need a place. You want it as an expression of being a Muslim, but you don’t want it to be politicized. So in order to integrate these things, I sometimes rather say no when I am asked to perform a public gender-inclusive prayer. In private, smaller settings – yes.

Until the age of twenty, you were a Christian. Your father was a Methodist minister. Today you are one of the best-known Muslim reform thinkers worldwide. Why did you become a Muslim?

Wadud: I was always interested in theological ideas. As you’re saying, my father was a Methodist minister. I was raised as a Christian and very, very interested in ideas about God, about morality, about human nature and about spirituality. So before converting to Islam I was a Buddhist, and lived in an Ashram and practiced meditation, which I still practice today. When I was twenty, I stepped into a mosque not far from where I lived. I wanted to know about Islam. I am very interested in the relationship between the profane and the sacred.

For me, Islam gave me a language, and actually Arabic was an important part of it – it gave me the language of tawhid, the language of God’s intimate relationship with the creation, but also the power to bring harmony to things which are disparate. That for me is the epitome of surrender. Islam helped me to understand my experience with Christianity and Buddhism. It is a reasoned revelation. This is maybe not for everyone, some people have a more simplistic understanding of Islam. But this is how I lived it.

When I was given the opportunity to study a little bit about Islam, I was very impressed, especially with the Koran. For me, the Koran opened up a relationship between my logic, my reasoning, my understanding of the world, my love and desire for nature, and for the world beyond the world, for the unseen. And so I have developed my work specifically with the area of Koran and gender, and that is the area that I think it is sort of a gift to me because it is something that I love doing.

As a child, you witnessed the civil rights movement in the United States. As an adolescent, you say that you were very conscious about personal freedom and intellectual independence. Wasn’t that in strong contradiction with the conservative mainstream Islam of the seventies?

Wadud: Certainly, I faced many contradictions. The struggle to be Muslim was easiest at the beginning, when I made the transformation from my post-Christian, post-Buddhist state into being a Muslim. Then, knowledge was the main impetus. Now it is more difficult, there is more that I understand and therefore more responsibility. My perspective is part of a reform and that makes it sometimes difficult because it is not mainstream.

When I first began to work on things that I considered to be gender mainstream, or gender-inclusive, the notion of Islamic Feminism had not been discussed. I wrote “Qur’an and Woman” in the end of the eighties. In fact, many see the book as the beginning of female-centred exegesis of the Koran, which is an important part of what we now recognize analytically as Islamic feminism. Muslim women are not all interested in Islamic Feminism. Some of them are not even interested in being Muslim. For me, I have not had a problem with Islam so much as I had a problem with the way in which Islam is practiced. And that this kind of Islam can sometimes be aggressive against women’s full rights.

But again, you have to understand that this is a new phenomenon in its name. Whether or not women accept that name – I myself never go by feminist – I always go by pro-faith, pro-feminist, because I am trying to combine the two things: the relationship with God, and the relationship with God as a woman.

So when there is patriarchy we must dismantle the patriarchy, not to replace it with something equally unequal, but rather to truly establish relationships of reciprocity between human beings no matter what their agenda or their perspective and that’s where we are finding ourselves in a new terrain where this work is going in many different countries where women and men, Muslims and non-Muslims, but clearly understanding that it’s not possible for God to create a call to him, her or it, and that call does not equally include women and men.

In your writings, you often refer to Christian and Jewish religious thinkers, among others Paul Tillich and Martin Buber. In your books “Qur’an and Woman” and “Inside the Gender Jihad” you defend pluralism, the freedom of opinion and the right to be different from an Islamic perspective. According to your writings, the Koran should be re-read from a gender perspective and in the light of its historical context. Yet, the Koran is considered to be eternal and unchangeable. How does that match?

Wadud: I think that unless you have had a real connection with the Koran, you will not understand how it is a force in history as well as in spirit. You will not be able to understand that there is a cooperation between the reader and the text. You will say that there is some flaw with methodology. But you have to understand that the readers can use the text for whatever they want, because there is a dynamic relationship between the text and the interpretation. The text is both created in time but also evolves beyond time.

Could you give an example of how that works in practice?

Wadud: We are now participating in a global reform movement for a Muslim personal status law, and the very fundamental basis for that yields back to the egalitarian trajectory of the Koran. The Koran did not complete that in the context of the prophet’s lifetime. But the Koran is not usurped by even its own historical context. But some people have grown up in a culture where the Koran is used for a narrow and restrictive interpretation so they consider that interpretation the only interpretation. And that’s problematic from my perspective. My work has shown that the interpretation is never complete. Meaning is never fixed.

The Koran as an open structure – where do you draw the line between hermeneutics and arbitrariness?

Wadud: What has happened in modernity after the enlightenment is a more rigid demarcation of the text that loses its flexibility historically. So I don’t want the text to be limited to this post-enlightenment interpretation. I don’t want the long legacy of interpretative works to be disregarded. I do however see that the necessity for the inclusion of gender as a category of thought is something that is unique post-enlightenment. And in that respect what we are doing is that we are looking through our own historical lens, and our historical lens is as legitimate as any other historical lens, and our historical lens is also limited, in that we are not projecting into the future.

© Qantara.de 2008

The American Muslim (TAM)

American Muslims and the 2008 Presidential Election
Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and other swing states that will determine the 2008 presidential election all have significant numbers of Muslim American voters.

Often misunderstood by other Americans, these voters may play a pivotal role in the election. Will they turn out for Barack Obama to protest the Bush administration’s conduct of foreign policy and other issues, and to embrace Democratic social policies? Or will they agree with John McCain’s approach to international affairs, as well as with his stand on taxes and other domestic policies? On some hot-button cultural issues, might Muslim American voters even emerge as a strong ally of the Christian right?

Jen’nan Ghazal Read says U.S. Muslims are far too diverse to be characterized in such sweeping terms. She says they resemble other Americans in their socioeconomic status, with political beliefs that range from ultra-conservative to ultra-liberal.

An associate professor of sociology and global health at Duke University, Read is an expert on Muslim American political assimilation.

With special support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Duke’s Office of News and Communications has created this website to serve as a resource for reporters and others who want to learn more about Muslim Americans and the 2008 election, drawing on the research of Professor Read and others.

American Muslims and the 2008 Presidential Election